Random Observations

The above image, concocted quickly this morning via the great Hittracker and some photoshop skillz, shows an overlay of the path of Adrian Gonzalez’ majestic home run last night on Petco’s architecture. When he hit it I was curious to know if it would have been a dinger in his old park. Hittracker tells us that it would have been a round-tripper in every park in the league, and you can see that Petco couldn’t have contained it either – the yellow line is Petco’s right field wall, the hard black line is Fenway’s bullpen wall. Nothing was holding in that shot.

Another thought from last night: one can see why scouts and other baseball people are enamored with Jarrod Saltalamacchia. His swing is natural, elegant, a thing of some beauty. Last night he ripped an opposite field double deep to the monster, and that hit was pure seduction. That double could be a case of blind squirrels, nuts, and all that. He may have a swing with no adaptability. He may have a terrible eye and limited pitch recognition. He may simply make far too little contact to be effective at the major league level, in the long term. But watching that hit you realize why people might get fooled: he looked, for a brief moment, like a pure, world-class hitter.

Incidentally, that overlay really shows how cavernous Petco is, doesn’t it? The only places where Fenway is deeper is the very farthest reaches of the triangle in center and the segment in right field where the fence angles back sharply, but even most of the bullpens are shallower than the right-field fence at Petco. Crazy.

“…He may have a swing with no adaptability. He may have a terrible eye and limited pitch recognition. He may simply make far too little contact to be effective at the major league level, in the long term….”
and that’s exactly why only a small %-age of the general population can play baseball at an elite level…the combinations of skills and inherent abilities required is astounding…

Your Saltalamacchia observation is kind of like my Wilson Betemit one. On the rare occasions he got a hit with the Yanks, I wondered how he wasn’t a very good player. His swing, the balance, everything suggested he should be really good. I guess he’s now hitting some with the Royals.